


Waltz Into My Heart (Or At Least Try, Baby)

by HallowedNight



Series: Newmann One-Shots [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Dancing, Fluff, Formal Parties, Hermann likes dancing, M/M, Post-Drift stuff, Shatterdome people are awkward, Yet Adorable, so Newt makes him dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 05:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2012475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HallowedNight/pseuds/HallowedNight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newton takes advantage of Hermann's memories after their Drift and discovers that the mathematician loved to dance. He vows to help the man continue his passion, even though everyone in the Shatterdome is about as awkward as a Kaiju with four left feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waltz Into My Heart (Or At Least Try, Baby)

**Author's Note:**

> Just some more shameless fluff from Tumblr. c:

The Drift is a strange thing. Two people’s memories were never supposed to come together like that, weaving in and out, connecting people until they can’t tear apart their substance from that of another. It’s weird, it’s sometimes uncomfortable, and a phenomenon Newton Geiszler never thought he’d have to deal with.

For once, though, he was wrong, and he’s not sure how that makes him feel.

Eventually, as the biologist-turned-celebrity debated all the mental flotsam now swimming around his head from his three-way Drift, he decided he should feel relieved. After all, he isn’t dead, which is definitely a plus; he’s not trying to kill anyone with the giant alien body he doesn’t have, which is probably the biggest plus; and he could think of worse people to share memories with than Hermie.

Oh, excuse, excuse. _Dr. Gottlieb_. As if they weren’t on a first name basis.

Newt snorted as he stared at the ceiling of his old workspace (he hesitated to call it a ‘lab’), supremely irritated and not-so-silently wishing he didn’t have to go to this party. Formal parties were _so boring_ , he very quickly assumed after being told – let’s forget asking – that he would be attending the event this evening. Of course, they don’t even let him find an apartment before they shove a tuxedo at him and force him into the public’s eye. So rude.

Hermann was being abnormally – infuriatingly – silent about the whole thing, a fact that ground Newt’s gears in a way-

The biologist shook his head. ‘Grinding one’s gears’ was definitely not a phrase he had used before he had half of Hermann’s thoughts forcefully implanted into his brain.

This was literally the _worst_.

Well, actually, he had ruled that out. But it was pretty close to the worst, and that didn’t sit well with him.

There was a lot to learn from these memories, Newt had found, so that helped soften the metaphorical blow by a small margin. For instance, randomly bringing up Victorian architecture in the middle of an argument rendered whatever point they were discussing completely moot, as Hermann would almost immediately lose all desire for conflict and try to resist the urge to start discussing the work of Allom in juxtaposition with that of Blomfield (a conversational tangent that Newt really had no chance of following).

Newton had also found out that Hermann had liked to dance at one point in his life. He had liked it a lot, actually. A ridiculous amount, Newt decided, after trying to convince himself for ten minutes that _it wasn’t him_ who had been teaching a gorgeous brunette (how did Hermann _even_ ) how to ballroom dance during a physics and mathematics conference in New York City.

It was harder to push away the horrible feeling of loss when this passion was snatched away from him. Or Hermann, actually. Newt had the use of all of his limbs, though his right leg did twinge occasionally. It hadn’t done that before the Drift.

All this pointless thinking was shoved to the back of Newt’s mind as he was shooed from the floor by none other than Hermann himself, who insisted that Newton begin to get ready, lest he be late and hold everyone up. Newt rolled his eyes as he retreated into his room, wondering how the actual hell he was supposed to put on this stupid tuxedo.

Several tutorials and a long car ride later, Newt was awkwardly standing in a too-full, too-loud, _too-uncomfortable_ room sipping a drink that he hadn’t initially wanted, but that he now firmly believed was the only thing keeping him from freaking out and bleeding on everyone. The few strangers – presumably scientists judging from their prying questions – that had attempted to make conversation with the biologist were scarred for life, Newton hoped. Thankfully, he wasn’t the only one looking horribly out of place; Raleigh was trailing behind Mako like a lost puppy, throwing awkward smiles at anyone his (friend? Girlfriend? Master?) Drift partner decided to talk to. Marshal Hansen was conversing with what Newt could only assume were other war veterans at a private table and resolutely ignoring anyone else who tried to talk to him. Hermann had set up shop on the other side of the room, very much alone and looking exceptionally miserable. Newt resolved to fix this, as it seemed the others were an entirely lost cause.

“Hermann. Hermann, hey,” Newt said rather unnecessarily as he plopped himself down at the mathematician’s table. “Do you wanna, I dunno, go dance or something?”

The withering glare Hermann shot towards the other man was entirely ignored, so he rolled his eyes. “You can’t dance, Newton.”

“That’s debatable,” Newt said with a shrug, even though he knew that it really wasn’t. There was a reason the Black Velvet Rabbits were a band and not a dance group. Well, sort of a band. Anyway. “Anyway, I have your memories now, so I pretty much can dance, thanks.”

Hermann sighed; Newt could all but hear the man resisting to urge to roll his eyes once again. “Well, I can’t,” he said darkly, tilting his head with one of those ‘Newton I’m going to kill you in a moment’ smiles. Newt ignored this as well.

“C’mon, Hermann, please? I know we’re both having an awful time, so we might as well do it together, right?” Newt’s expression could only be described as a ‘puppy dog face,’ a tactic which usually had no effect on his colleague whatsoever; it was worth a try though.

A slight smile crept onto the biologist’s face as Hermann looked away and shrugged. “I can’t dance, Newton.”

Sensing the growing chink in Hermann’s metaphorical armor, Newt jumped up and grabbed the man’s arm to drag him away to a relatively deserted corner. Suddenly all smiles, the shorter man snatched Hermann’s cane away and rested it against the nearest wall before twining his hands around Hermann’s waist to support him. “See? You’re not gonna fall or anything, I’ve got you. You don’t even have to move that much, actually, most of this music is pretty slow anyway-”

As Newt continued rambling, Hermann awkwardly rested his forearms on the biologists shoulders, allowing his hands to hang limply behind the other man’s back.

When Newt finally stopped for a breath (the man had moved on from random facts about dancing to the effects of music on growing plants), Hermann cut in: “This is stupid.”

“Is it?” Newt questioned, looking up at Hermann with a smile so mischievous it should be illegal. Hermann could feel a slight flush creeping up his neck.

“Yes. Ridiculously stupid,” the mathematician muttered as he stared determinedly at a spot above Newton’s head.

“Good,” Newt said, his smile only growing wider as he returned to his previous monologue concerning plants. Hermann liked to think that he held back his own smiles the entire time, but Newton knew otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> The Black Velvet Rabbits was actually Newt’s band; it was mentioned for like a millisecond in the novelization. c:


End file.
